Gender and Noun Class

[Martin Haspelmath]

I agree with Dik Bakker that there is no general term. So you can either 
make one up (e.g. "nype", short for "noun-type"), or use one of the 
existing ones.

The problem with making up a new term is that people will be puzzled 
about the form (because of neophobia – people generally don't like new 
words). The problem with using one of the existing terms is that many 
people will be puzzled about the meaning you give to it.

 From the point of view of our science, it would be better if some 
people had the courage to make up new words, because we have far too few 
terms (especially too few roots) for the many conceptual distinctions 
that we need to make.

But from the point of your career (if you don't have tenure yet), it's 
better to be conservative. In contrast to Dik, I would say that if 
either of the two terms "noun class" and "gender" can be said to be 
neutral, it's "gender". Grev Corbett has written a great survey book on 
gender, where he uses the term in the general sense, also for languages 
like Bantu. But nobody has talked about "noun classes in Dutch". So you 
could simply say that you use "gender" in the Corbettian sense. (Note 
also that even in English, "gender" has an earlier sense 'kind, type', 
like French genre and Latin genus.)

Greetings,
Martin

On 10/05/2013 13:15, Bakker, Dik wrote:
> Hi Don,
>
> I am not aware of any general term, but I think noun class
> IS a/the neutral term. I think one should use it, maybe with
> a footnote or short remark motivating it the way you do
> in your message ('maybe historically based on semantics,
> but synchronically not any longer etc', in fact just as in
> many languages where, in the case of a two- or three-way system,
> gender is still the term, even if the vast majority of nouns have no
> (real) gender whatsoever, and some have the 'wrong' type,
> such as 'meisje' 'girl' in dutch, which has neuter rather than
> feminine gender, since it is originally derived from a diminutive
> (meid-DIM), but no longer analysed as such.
>
> Best,
>
> Dik
>
>
> Dik Bakker
> Dept. of General Linguistics
> Universities of Amsterdam & Lancaster
> tel (+31) 35 544 75 78
> http://www.uva.nl/profiel/d.bakker
>
> Societas Linguistica Europaea
> Secretary/Treasurer
> http://www.societaslinguistica.eu/
> http://www.linguisticsociety.eu/
>
> ________________________________________
> Van: Discussion List for ALT [LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org] namens Don Killian [donald.killian at HELSINKI.FI]
> Verzonden: vrijdag 10 mei 2013 10:19
> To: LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org
> Onderwerp: Gender and Noun Class
>
> Dear all,
>
> I have read quite a number of books and articles by this point on this
> subject, but despite everything I haven't been able to come to a
> conclusion on something, so I thought to ask the list for suggestions
> (particularly since some of the authors on the subject are on this list!).
>
> The difference between gender and noun classes seems to be mostly
> tradition rather than actual linguistic differentiations (perhaps noun
> classes are generally viewed to have more categories, but even that
> isn't absolute), and I've run into a terminology problem with a current
> grammatical description I'm working on... mainly on what might be a more
> neutral term incorporating both of these ideas.
>
> Uduk differentiates all nouns into two categories which are for the most
> part arbitrary, both phonologically and semantically (in contrast to
> Corbett's comment: "When we analyse assignment systems of languages from
> different families we find that genders always have a semantic core.")
>
> As Uduk is NOT using semantics as the main criteria for differentiation
> (at least not synchronically), I would like to use a more neutral term
> than gender or noun class to refer to these categories. Each time I have
> used gender or noun class, a number of readers have associated
> biological gender/animacy with the first or Bantu-style noun class
> systems with the second, and it can often end up detracting from my
> focus.  I'd rather avoid any sort of general debate on what a noun
> class/gender system actually is, and instead focus on the actual
> grammatical system of Uduk.
>
> Hence my question to the list.. IS there a more neutral term than noun
> class or gender to refer to grammatical categories of nouns in a
> language?  Agreement class isn't quite adequate because it also doesn't
> necessarily refer to this being a nominal property (and noun agreement
> class is too cumbersome of a term). Nominal category is awkward,
> although possible.
>
> I'm open to further suggestions people have.
>
> Best,
>
> Don
>
>
> --
> Don Killian
> Researcher in African Linguistics
> Department of Modern Languages
> PL 24 (Unioninkatu 40)
> FI-00014 University of Helsinki
> +358 (0)44 5016437
>
>
>


-- 
Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at eva.mpg.de)
Max-Planck-Institut fuer evolutionaere Anthropologie, Deutscher Platz 6	
D-04103 Leipzig
Tel. (MPI) +49-341-3550 307, (priv.) +49-341-980 1616